Church Historical Sites in Herefordshire and Preston, England

 We had three days in England to fulfill an assignment given by the Area Presidency.  In the process of completing our assigned duties, we managed to see and briefly visit several important church historical sites.
Travelling from Birmingham to Preston we stopped at Gadfield Elm.  Gadfield Elm was the first chapel in England and was use before anything built in America. It was originally built in 1836 by a religious group known as the United Brethren.  Through the efforts of Wilford Woodruff, most of the members of this group were baptized into the Church in 1840.

The United Brethren, led by a man named Thomas Knighton, had separated themselves from the Methodists and were seeking further light and knowledge about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Wilford Woodruff recorded that "on the 21st day of March I baptized Elder Thomas Kington.  He was superintendent of both preachers and members of the United Brethren. "The first thirty days after my arrival in Herefordshire, I had baptized forty-five preachers and one hundred and sixty members of the United Brethren, who put into my hands one chapel and forty-five houses, which were licensed according to law to preach in."

After the conversion of the United Brethren, the Gadfield Elm Chapel, deeded to the Church of Jesus Christ by John Benbow and Thomas Knighton, was used for several conferences of the Church, at which Brigham Young, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke at least once.  The Gadfield Elm Chapel became the center of activity for the Church in the area. With the call of the Saints to gather in America, the chapel was subsequently sold to help fund ocean passage of the converts.  It was deeded back to the Church in 2004.

On July 22, 1837, the first seven missionaries arrived in Preston's Market Square (namely Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Willard Richards, Joseph Fielding, Isaac Russell, John Goodson and John Snider).  The Elders preached beneath this obelisk on a number of occasions where "both rich and poor...flocked from all parts to 'hear what these dippers had to say."  (The elders were 

referred to as dippers given the mode of baptism by immersion).

We then proceeded down to a beautiful park.  In this park are three LDS plaques - the largest of which commemorates the first baptisms in England.  The Ribble River flows along the perimeter of the park.  It is here that a number of baptisms took place.  Heber C. Kimball is quoted as saying, "The circumstances of baptizing in the open air being a somewhat novel, a concourse of between seven and nine thousand persons assembled on 

the banks of the river to witness the ceremony."  The bridge on which we are standing is called the old Tram Bridge and is actually only 45 years old.  The original wooden bridge was torn down in the 1960's and a new one was constructed in exactly the same style but this time in concrete.  It was a beautiful day, rather rare for that time of the year.  The first two candidates for baptism were so eager they had a foot race to the water's edge to see who would be the first British baptism.  George D.  Watt was the lucky winner.

This farm house was owned by John Benbow, a rather well-to-do land holder who occupied the house from 1832 to1840.  Wilford Woodruff gave his first gospel sermon here on March 5,  1840.  We visited the property and the pond where Bro. Benbow and 31 others were baptized in the space of 5 days.  In the short time Elder Wilford Woodruff was there, he baptized 301 people in Herefordshire.